Some years ago I
stood beside Thomas Lüdke of the 1980ies Electro band "The Invincible
Spirit" in the backstage area of a festival near Berlin, when he talked to
an elderly looking guy with a bald patch. This guy, who appeared suspiciously
like a bank clerk during leisure time, told him with an enthused face that he
grew up with his music - and I was really amused to see how Thomas' smile
started to freeze. Yes, time is inexorably. Three or four years later it was my
smile that froze. After our show in Rome a young woman told me that she prefers
to listen to that old music from the 1990ies - just like ours. And then she
asked me what my initial spark was to make such kind of music - in those old
days. Which was a really good question.
When my school
buddy Kai Kampmann and I started our first project (named T:H:E) in 1985, New
Wave was already absorbed by the public - but its darker side was still
peculiar for "normal" people. Since the Darkwave scene was pretty
small in our hometown, everybody was welcome to join the club. Unlike today
there did not exist any rules how you have to be or how you have to act. No
dresscode, just creativity. We saw ourselves as a group of individuals, united
by a common perception - and by the confusion of our enviroment. Our teachers
sneered at our weird haircuts, our classmates regarded wearing black clothes
even in summer as totally stupid and my parents were a bit concerned about the
fact that I used kohl. And that I ran around in a black pyjama for quite a
while (according to that line in the Adam & The Ants' song "Prince
Charming": 'ridicule is nothing to be scared of'), did not make it easier
for them. We thought we were real underground and enjoyed being different. And
with exactly that attitude we created quite simple tunes with melancholic
lyrics, inspired by bands like The Cure or Joy Division, based on a borrowed
drum machine, a guitar, a bass and a cheap monophonic synth. We did not know
anything about songwriting nor did we care about it. We did not take it
seriously, it was just fun with sad faces. One day we saw an advert of a
recording studio called Andromeda, which offered a whole recording day for just
200 Deutschmarks. So we took some friends with us and entered that cellar
studio one sunny morning to record our first demo songs. Which seemed to be a
bad idea at first. Those two rock musicians, who ran that studio, could not do
anything with our music. In their eyes we were just some bumbling school boys
with childish ideas - and of course they were right. They grumbled that our
songs would be too monotonous, too whistful and without any catchy hooks. They
told us what we should do to get a proper tune and it was not very easy to
defend our loose conception against permanent interferences when they were
justified by the reference to a long-standing experience. But strangely enough:
the more we had to argue, the more we got convienced about the way we wanted to
have it. And in the end they gave in and just recorded - grudgingly - what we
were doing. Of course the songs sounded really poor, but they were our songs.
And I think that was the point when I knew that this kind of music was more to
me than just a fashion or a juvenile quirk. Who cares about perfection and
exterior expectations when you find your own emotions in something you create?
And when I went home after the recordings I stood at a bus stop and a woman
pointed at me and said to her 8 or 9 years old son that he would end up like me
if he would not make more efforts in school. Yes, that was a great day...
Categories:
DUSK MEMORIES
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